It's election time. Although most congressional races
are so lopsided that incumbent re-election rates will continue to
rival those of the former Soviet Union, citizens face critically
important choices: elections for governors who must make tough
decisions in these tight fiscal times, House and Senate races to
determine control of a narrowly divided Congress and a host of
ballot measures.

In this great democracy of ours, one might expect a
surge of voter participation to show the world just how proud we are
of self-government.

Think again. By all indications, voters are not
excited or engaged. In fact, experts are predicting that barely a
third of adults will go to the polls. That's one of the lowest voter
turnouts in the established democratic world for elections of a
national legislature.

A host of reasons can be fingered, but there's an
essential one that many overlook. Our two-party system has reached a
dead-end.

The two-party system has its advocates, but any
advantages it may once have provided are swamped by problems that
are inescapable with today's marketing technology and expertise. As
long as we limit credible choices to two, most campaigns will sink
into a distasteful concoction of poll-driven sound bites, negative
attacks and avoidance of important issues.

Democrats and Republicans may fight bitterly in
Washington, but it's getting nearly impossible to distinguish them
during election season. In desperate bids to be all things to half
the people, both parties blur lines on everything from corporate
malfeasance and Social Security to even something as momentous as
war.

Both parties are too quick to abandon principle and
their heritage for the expediency of winning elections. Republicans
talk nice about education and tough about corporate wrongdoers and
advance plans to subsidize prescription drug costs -- all
traditionally Democratic issues. When stocks tumbled, they quickly
buried the idea of funneling part of Social Security proceeds into
private investment accounts.

Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership fell in line
behind President Bush's bid to oust Saddam Hussein, despite severe
misgivings by most of their party's voters. On the campaign trail
they mirror Republican vows to be tough on crime, crack down on
welfare cheats, increase military spending and balance the budget.

And of course given the zero-sum dynamic of two-choice
politics, both sides won't hesitate to bludgeon opponents. The
quintessential campaign success of 2002 was a political ad in
Montana's U.S. Senate race that was so devastating that the opponent
temporarily folded his campaign tent.

In our "winner take all" system, campaign consultants
and their polls and focus groups have become political steroids --
once used by one party, the other follows out of fear of falling
behind.

Because of these modern methods, in close elections a
s mall minority of voters has much greater influence than the rest
of us. These are the almighty "swing voters" who have yet to make up
their mind.

Think back to the battle for Florida's senior vote in
the 2000 presidential elections and the issues repeatedly stressed
in national debates -- Medicare, prescription drugs, and Social
Security lockboxes. All are important, but other major issues were
ignored. In the zero-sum game of "winner take all" politics, if
you're in the wrong demographic in the wrong place, you might as
well be living on Mars.

Since my independent presidential campaign in 1980,
events have only reinforced my belief in the need to expand viable
choices across the political spectrum. To do so, we must change
rules that make such candidacies all too rare.

First, we should adopt instant runoff voting to give
independents and alternative parties a fair chance to compete
without being "spoilers." Attractive third party candidates and
independents could try to build majority support, without
threatening major party candidates by their mere presence

Second, we must consider following the lead of most
modern democracies in adopting forms of proportional representation,
in which both those in the majority and minority win a fair share of
representation. Only then will we have a truly muscular democracy,
with credible candidacies across the spectrum that ensure important
issues -- and the people that care about them -- are not left
behind.

In an era when the public itself is becoming
practically bystanders to elections, with decreasing participation
and declining expectations, our "winner take all" system has failed
us. A two-party system too easily can mean no choice at all. We need
bold reforms to reverse these alarming trends.

A Member of Congress from 1961 to 1981 and a
former presidential candidate, John B. Anderson is president of the
Center for Voting and Democracy. For information, contact
www.fairvote.org or PO Box 60037, Washington, DC
20039